Analyzing Character eBook

of trouble and annoyance in heating apparatus.
Long and hard he thought and conjectured, and studied
statistics, and followed reports of experiments, but
for the life of him he could not take any interest
in any such line of research. He hated the gases,
ashes, soot, smoke, and dirt generally. Huge rough
castings of steel and iron seemed gross and ugly to
him, and the completed product seemed coarse and unfinished.
The only improvements he could think of were improvements
in beauty of line, in refinement of the design, in
added ornamentation, and other enhancements of the
physical appearance of the product. In these
he took some interest, but he had the good sense to
know that no change of this kind would accomplish
what they wished in the matter of going after a national
market.

THE HIGH-SALARIED ONE FAILS

For a while President Jessup waited patiently; then,
as the big salary checks came to him to be signed
month after month, he began to grow restless.
No result had yet been announced and in his conferences
with Lynch, he could not determine that any hopeful
progress was being made. Finally, in desperation,
he called his engineers and designers together.
For three weeks he worked with them night and day,
studying, analyzing, making records, and computing
results. They took cat-naps on benches in the
laboratory while waiting for fires to burn a standard
number of hours; ate out of lunch-boxes; and finally,
unshaven and covered with soot and ashes, they triumphantly
produced a fire-box and boiler which would burn the
cheapest kind of coal screenings satisfactorily, with
but little supervision and a high degree of efficiency.
This was the best thing they had ever done in the
laboratory. This was the attainment which he had
so long desired. This, properly advertised and
handled, certainly ought to revolutionize the steam
and hot-water heating business. But it was not
one of Lynch’s brain-children. However,
Lynch would now have an opportunity to prove his value
and return to the concern large profits for the amount
they had spent and would spend upon him. At any
rate, he knew how to plan and conduct an advertising
and selling campaign.

Lynch, intensely relieved by the solving of this problem,
the utility of which he very readily saw, threw himself,
heart and soul, into the construction of the advertising
campaign. As this work progressed, Jessup began
to have some misgivings. While the advertisements,
circulars, catalogues, and other literature were beautiful;
while the English in them was elegant, and the form
of expression refined, somehow or other, they seemed
to lack the necessary punch or kick which Jessup knew
they ought to have. The two big things about
the new product were, first, economy of fuel; second,
ease of operation and small demand for supervision.
These points were not brought out clearly enough.
They did not grip. They did not get home as they